


red and black roses

by here_withoutyou



Series: got a memory of you I carry in my soul, I wrap it close around me when the nights get cold [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Avengers Family, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Canonical Character Death, Everyone misses Natasha, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Natasha deserves a funeral, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), natasha romanov is a hero
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-05-07 12:12:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19209190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/here_withoutyou/pseuds/here_withoutyou
Summary: Steve bend down on one knee and let the flower wreath glide onto the water. Red and black roses, carefully wrapped around a white ribbon.Just giving Nat the funeral she deserved.





	red and black roses

**Author's Note:**

> Yes I know it’s been over a month. Yes I know there are tons of fanfics about this already. But I’m not over it yet, and I still needed to write my own version of this, even if just to cope with my own feelings.

They were standing there quietly by the lake, just the four of them. Captain America, Hulk, Hawkeye and Thor. Almost as good as in the old days. Almost reunited. Almost. 

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end. They had known how high the stakes were when all of them had agreed on an heroic, motivated _whatever it takes_. Of course they had known. Still, none of them could have possibly been prepared for this. None of them could have possibly known that this was what it would take. None of them could have possibly know that the price they would have to pay would be this high. 

They had won everything back, they had defeated Thanos, saved half the universe. But despite everything it didn’t seem like they won, not to them. The victory had demanded a price that certainly still seemed way too high to pay to all of them. It had come at the cost of losing part their team, their family. It meant losing what they loved, losing the ones that meant the world to them. Defeating Thanos had meant sacrificing two of their own, to trade lives. Something that they had once sworn they would never do. They had had to brake all their noble principles to win this last fight. They had to suffer so the rest of the universe didn’t have to anymore. This was what it took. This was the price they had to pay. This was what made them heroes to everyone else. 

The silence was dreading, unbearable, under the dark grey clouds. Neither of them knew what to say. Or knew what to do next. Somehow they were still here, still breathing, but it didn’t really feel like being alive anymore. It felt like someone had ripped out their core, had taken out their very heart. And now their lungs were still filling with air at every breath, but something was missing to pump it through their veins, to keep them alive. 

More minutes passed, minutes that felt like hours. When Steve finally broke the silence, his voice sounded far away to all of them, somehow unreal. “Did she have any family, anyone we should notify?” He asked carefully. His voice was horse from all the crying, his eyes were glued to the ground. It hurt him even just to speak about it. Even just acknowledging the fact that it was real, that she was really gone, was too much. 

“No just us,” Clint replied dully, and then, after a deep breath, added “We were all she had. We were her family. She always told me that. And she seemed so happy about it. Like she had finally found her place, you know. Like she could finally start dealing with everything and start over and find happiness.” He sounded just as worn down as Steve did, his voice almost crushing under the weight of the pain he felt. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that she was the one that had to go. It should have been him. She should have lived. She deserved to live. She deserved happiness. She deserved to have a place in this new, beautiful universe. More than he ever would. 

Clint felt Steve’s hand on his shoulder and realized that his own hands had clenched into fists at his sides and more tears had made their way into his eyes and down his cheeks again. He was just so angry. At himself, at the universe, at everything. Clint took a few deep breaths, trying to calm himself as much as possible before he spoke up again. “We should still do something for her. Not a huge celebration like for Tony. That wouldn’t be like her, but just _something_ , you know, just a small ceremony with the ones she loved the most. I know she wasn’t too much one for the spotlight, but not doing anything it just... it just doesn’t feel right.”

Steve squeezed his shoulder gently. “I agree. We should, she deserves it.” A hint of bitterness swung with in his tone, because she deserved so much more than just a simple ceremony. She deserved being here with them. She deserved being able to be happy. She deserved the whole goddamn universe. However, this was all they could do for her now, the last thing they could give to her was to remember her and always keep her in their hearts. So that was what they would do. 

“Yeah I think that’s a good idea. She would have liked that,” Bruce agreed too, his voice sounded distant and he seemed absent somehow. The truth was he hadn’t said much ever since the battle had ended and neither one of them knew what to say to make him better. In all honesty, it didn’t really seem possible to make any of this better. 

Thor just nodded silently, an unreadable expression on his face, his eyes full of grief. The truth was he hadn’t said much either. 

Things went quiet again, all of them just standing there and looking at the still, dark water until Steve was the first to move. “I’ll let Fury know.” 

— • —

Steve was the one to hold the speech. He had tried to convince Clint to do it, because he was her best friend and probably had been the most important person in her life. But Clint had backed down nervously, with his hands fidgeting and an anxious tone in his voice. “No, you do it, really. I’m pretty sure that by that point you are... you were... just as important in her life... maybe even a little more important because you were there with her after... and to be honest I can’t... I just... I can’t.” So Steve had taken on that task, but not without giving his friend a strong hug. “You were always the most important person in her life. She told me,” he had whispered to Clint, hoping to be able to comfort him at least a bit. 

Now he was standing here in front of them, gathered under the shade of a big willow tree at the shore of the lake. It was only a handful people, really, but a handful of people that held Natasha dearly and that she had held dearly. So it was more than enough. 

As he was preparing to speak, he looked into all of those faces, their eyes full of sadness. They had lost so much already and now they had one more loss to grief. 

One too many. 

_Two too many._

Still, after all this time, after everything that he had seen and done, every loss was one too many to Steve Rodgers. And the fact that this time he had lost two of the people he loved the most made it unbearable to him. It tore him apart that he hadn’t been able to protect them and even more so that there wasn’t anything in the world now that he could do to change it. 

He could feel the tears welling up already. Somehow he didn’t know where to start exactly. He had so much to say, but at the same time the pain was closing his throat, making him speechless. He swallowed it down nonetheless, _for Nat_ , he thought, and began to speak. 

“I don’t have to tell you how special Natasha was. We all knew her and loved her deeply. We loved her with all her good sides, but we also loved her with all her flaws.  
I think she thought all of us so much. She thought us that everyone makes mistakes and that no one is perfect. She thought us that no matter how badly you mess up, no matter how dark your past is, your tomorrow can always be brighter. You can always improve yourself and be better. Even when she already was a better person, one of the best and strongest I have ever known, she still told me she was trying to be better every day. Was trying to be better for us.”

Steve had to take a deep breath at the memory to keep his voice from breaking. He still could still see her sitting there with tears in her eyes. It had pained him to see her in such pain that day, even though he had admired her for her strength in getting through all of it. And it pained him now to think of it, pained him to know that it was one of the last memories he had with just her. 

With a slightly shaken voice he eventually continued.  
“She was a friend, an Avenger, a part of our family. But most importantly, she was the very heart of this team. She has always been the one holding us together and telling us that despite our differences, we need to stay united at all costs. We didn’t always listen, but she was always there to remind us, always there to bring us back together when we had fallen apart.  
After the snap happened and everyone else moved on, she was the one who kept going. The one who kept fighting, who was never willing to give up hope that we could still fix this. That we could bring everyone back.  
When the whole world was falling apart and our team was broken, she was the one who held everything together. I have no idea how she did it sometimes, but I admire her deeply for it.  
I think I speak for a lot of us when I say that, despite everything, despite her past, once you gave her a reason to trust you, you knew you could always rely on her in turn and trust her to have your back. Once you earned it, she was one of the most loyal and trustworthy people have ever known.  
And that’s exactly what she did this time. She didn’t give up on any of us. She had all our backs. Without her, none of us would be here.”

He paused again to clear his throat and take a look around, looking into all the faces of the people whose lives Natasha had touched deeply, whose hearts she had left an irreversible mark on. He noticed Fury sitting in the front, his features stained with grief, silent tears streaming down his face. He didn’t even bother to wipe them off. 

Steve noticed Maria Hill next to him. Her face looked petrified, the shock still evident in her eyes. She still couldn’t believe this was even real. 

He noticed the rest of the team over on the side, huddled together in a half circle of their own, all looking at him through the same haze of sadness in their eyes. Clint had an arm around his wife next to him and both of his kids on his lap, one on each knee. Thor and Bruce were sunken into their chairs on his left.

Steve noticed the rest of the faces of their time heist team in the back, and even a few people from Wakanda. One of them was Okoye, whose face usually was full of strength, but today, it was only full of grief. 

Steve continued slowly, his voice low at the thought of yet another memory, at remembering the feeling of Natasha’s tight embrace when everything inside him had been burning with pain. Her words in his ear, soft and comforting.  
_“I didn’t want you to be alone.”_

“She said something to me once, when I had just lost a dear friend of mine and was having a hard time. She said ‘We have what we have when we have it’.  
That was just another thing that made Nat so special. Somehow she always knew the right thing to say. To make you feel better, to make you laugh, or sometimes even to make you angry.”

There was a few teary chuckles at that, because they all remembered how true that was. 

“And somehow that statement stuck with me. It says so much about her character and her strength. No matter how tough it got and how hard times were, she never let anything get her down. She never gave up. There has been so many times, especially in the last few years, when I felt like losing hope and giving up. But she didn’t. She always kept going and by that always helped me to keep going. She always gave me hope.  
And I know for a fact that she wouldn’t want us to lose hope now. She wouldn’t want us to give up or to be devastated for too long about what we have lost. If she was here today, she would tell us to keep living and being happy. She would tell us to appreciate all the time that we had with her, but also not be too sad about the fact that it is over. And she would tell us to look around for a moment and appreciate everything that we still have and that we have back, because even though we have lost something, we still have a lot to be thankful for and many reasons to keep going.  
So that is all we can do now, really. To be thankful for the time we had with her, for knowing her, for every memory and all the happiness she brought to all of our lives, even when she didn’t know it or didn’t really believe that she did. All we can do is to keep her memory alive and to keep our in our hearts. To keep living our lives in happiness and appreciation to honor her and everything she sacrificed her own for. To honor everything she sacrificed for us.  
Because in the end that is who she was. Selfless, brave, loyal, and without any second thought willing to give everything for the people she cared about.  
In the end, she was a true hero. And that’s how we will always remember her in our hearts.”

It was quiet for a minute when he had finished. Everyone was taking a moment for themselves to let the words sink in. To revel in a few memories or to let the tears attempt to wash away the pain. To say goodbye. 

Steve realized then that this was completely different from losing Tony. He had been a friend, a team member and they both had been truly loved. But losing Natasha really felt like losing the very heart of their family. Without her or anyone realizing, she had been their centerpiece. She had always held them together and always had kept them going. And now that she was gone there was a hole that felt somehow different and deeper than the one that Tony had left. 

— • —

Afterwards, they all gathered at the shore of the lake. The water seemed particularly calm today. Almost peaceful. The sunlight had started to break through the trees now to where they were standing, immersing the scene into a warm golden light and creating sparkling reflections on the surface of the water. 

This was when it really hit Steve that they, in one part, had her to thank for all this. For still being here, for being reunited with their families, for seeing the Earth rise in such beauty again. And he knew then that they would have to make the best out of it. They owed it to her.  
To both of them. 

Steve bend down on one knee and let the flower wreath glide onto the water. Red and black roses, carefully wrapped around a white ribbon, fine silver letters forming the words  
_A soul for a soul._  
And below, written a bit smaller, the words she had said to Steve all those years ago.  
_We have what we have when we have it._

“I just wish we could let her know. That we won. That we did it,” Clint broke the silence. 

“Me too, and that we have all this because of her,” Steve responded with a sad smile on his face. 

Wanda nodded next to Clint, a distant glance in her face. “She knows. They both do.”

“I hope so.”

They just stood there for the rest of it, watching in silence while the flowers floated away until they joined the second ones in the middle of the lake, both wreaths floating there like the ghosts of the two fallen heroes that they were lucky enough to have been able to call their friends. 

As they were watching, they all thought the same thing. 

_See you in a minute, Nat._

Even if that minute would last a lifetime.


End file.
